Think of the best performances from the past 20 years.
OK, make it a little easier on yourself. Think of the Academy Awards from recent years: Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln, Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, Nicole Kidman as Virginia Wolff in The Hours, or Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. Roles that pop usually have a big character twist, anything from a period friendly dialect to full body makeover to a life or death problem on their plate. "Normality" is rarely praised and rewarded when it comes to acting, simply because it doesn't pop. That's why the Cannes Film Festival debut The Past is downright revelatory: it's people acting like people while chewing up scenery Day-Lewis style.
Director Asghar Farhadi, who won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2011's A Separation, shifts his lens from Iran to Paris for Le passé to examine a deteriorating family. Academy Award-nominated actress Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) plays Marie, who we first see picking up her soon-to-be ex-husband Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) from the airport so their divorce can finally be settled. Farhadi introduces us to the fissuring couple from behind a pane of glass that blocks out the sound — a choice made several times during the film. The motif hones our attention in on the physical performances of Farhadi's ensemble while speaking to the issues that slowly percolate throughout The Past. As Ahmad settles in for a few days with his former family, he digs up secrets that everyone thought were better left unsaid.
In a challenging move, Farhadi takes most of the usual exposition and setup and unrolls it over the course of the film. Turns out Ahmad and Marie's tense relationship is only the beginning. Marie's boyfriend Samir (Tahar Rahim of A Prophet) has a heap of his own issues, putting the responsibility of caring for his son on her shoulders. As Ahmad witnesses, the boy requires attention Marie doesn't have. Her dwindling relationship with older daughter, Lucie (Pauline Burlet), is strained as it is. With every scene, The Past complicates the scenario. To reveal the twists would only unknot Farhadi's breathtaking execution.
The Past doesn't play M. Night Shyamalan games. instead, the reveals are fuel for naturalistic drama. To allow the acting to breathe, Farhadi stages his action in a theatrical fashion. One or two angles suffice when Bejo rages out against her surrogate son and Mosaffa calms a downward spiraling Burlet. Having been introduced to Americans in a silent era throwback, Bejo proves herself a starlet to contend with one devastating moment after another. In contrast, Mosaffa remains collected while being haunted by the past. Farhadi has a musician's ear for dialogue. Out of his actors' mouths the words are rhythmic and provocative, the young Burlet acting as the film's soft soprano. She's simply stunning, and yet the polar opposite of any of the aforementioned "best" performances.
Oscar talk is a component of Cannes and The Past is certainly a contender for year-end awards. But while the cast is deserving, Farhadi's latest may be limited to foreign and writing categories. Despite the fury of dramatic wordplay and understated work across the board, this is not a collection of Daniel Day-Lewis-style performances. No broad characterizations, no identifiable mimicking, no showy explosions. It may not be a fit for the Academy Awards, but over the thrilling two hours of The Past, they're everything that makes "the best."
[Photo Credit: Sony Pictures]
Follow Matt Patches on Twitter @misterpatches
More:Emma Watson Skewers Celebs in 'Bling Ring'Cannes: Why an American Can't Direct 'Fifty Shades'See All of Hollywood.com's Cannes Coverage!

What more can be said about 2001: A Space Odyssey? This month celebrating its 45th anniversary, it’s one of the most influential science fiction films ever made — with its DNA spliced and replicated in a host of other films from Blade Runner to Inception — despite being so very singular. It transformed sci-fi from the sex-and-monsters exploitation schlock that glutted the genre in much of the ‘60s and showed that sci-fi could be transcendent and spiritual. It baffled many upon its first release — Pauline Kael and Stanley Kauffman were among its high-profile detractors, while Steven Spielberg called it the “big bang” for his generation of filmmakers. Its meanings have been so endlessly scrutinized and dissected that any further analysis seems redundant. And yet, there are so many details about its origins, production, and initial release that you probably don’t know. Here are 20 things about 2001: A Space Odyssey that we’re guessing you’ve never heard of before. You’re welcome.
1. Though 2001: A Space Odyssey and the novel of the same title were conceived at the same time, Kubrick didn’t think at first that sci-fi novelist Arthur C. Clarke would be willing to take on the job. The science fiction writer was living in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and was thought to be a recluse. When his agent telegraphed him about the offer to work on Kubrick’s project, Clarke’s response was, “Frightfully interested in working with enfant terrible… what makes Kubrick think I’m a recluse?”
2. Alternate titles considered for the project early on were Journey Beyond the Stars, Universe, Tunnel to the Stars, Planetfall, and How the Solar System Was Won. The last was a reference to MGM’s 1962 epic Western How the West Was Won, which 2001: A Space Odyssey was originally going to copy by using that film’s three-camera super-widescreen Cinerama format.
3. Though the 2001: A Space Odyssey novel, released shortly after the film in 1968, only listed Clarke as its author, originally, the film’s screenplay was going to be credited to “Stanley Kubrick &amp; Arthur C. Clarke,” while the novel would list “Arthur C. Clarke &amp; Stanley Kubrick” as its authors.
4. In his book The Cosmic Connection, celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan wrote that Kubrick and Clarke asked him how they should portray extraterrestrial life. They had been thinking about showing the aliens that transform astronaut Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) into the Star Child as humanoid themselves. But Sagan said that the chances of alien life looking like humans would be so remote that to include human-looking aliens in the film would immediately render it false. So Kubrick and Clarke decided not to show the aliens at all.
5. HAL 9000 was originally to have had a female persona and to have been named Athena. A female HAL (named SAL, of course) does appear in the completely un-Kubrickian sequel 2010: The Year We Make Contact.
6. There was originally going to be a lot of voiceover in 2001: A Space Odyssey, which would have made certain plot points much more obvious. For instance, the satellites orbiting Earth were originally to have been specifically identified as carrying nuclear weapons. That means that the famous million-years-spanning match cut of the bone the ape tossed in the air to the shot of the satellite wouldn’t have indicated how far humankind had come as how little it has changed, at least when it comes to our love of weapons.
7. 2001 was originally going to have ended like Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, with the Star Child detonating the nuclear bombs that humanity has in orbit. However, a fireworks show of nuclear blasts was thought to be too similar to the ending of Kubrick’s previous film, Dr. Strangelove.
8. The Discovery’s final destination was originally going to be Saturn, but special effects guru Douglass Trumbull and his team weren’t able to make convincing-looking rings, so Jupiter became the last stop instead.
9. Pavel Klushantsev, a Russian documentary filmmaker of the 1950s, strongly influenced Kubrick’s vision of weightlessness in space — and the idea of a spinning space station — with his film Road to the Stars. 2001: A Space Odyssey, in turn, would influence Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky to make Solaris, which the director intended as a humanistic response to Kubrick’s film, which he thought was antiseptic.
10. For the famous shot of the astronaut running around the circumference of the cylindrical Discovery fuselage, Kubrick commissioned a 30-ton rotating “Ferris wheel” to be built, at the cost of $750,000, that would make it look like the astronaut was at times running upside down.
11. The movie was originally to have opened with a 10-minute black-and-white prologue featuring interviews with real-life scientists like Freeman Dyson discussing alien life. (Star Trek: The Next Generation fans will know Freeman Dyson for his work in hypothesizing a Dyson Sphere, a massive structure that theoretically could be built around and enclose a star.) After MGM execs balked, that beginning was deleted.
12. All the deleted footage other than the 17 minutes of scenes that Kubrick subsequently cut after 2001’s April 1968 premiere in Washington D.C., including that 10-minute documentary prologue, he had burned shortly before the director's death, in order to prevent posthumous reedits or “deleted scenes” to be included on future DVD releases.
13. Kubrick had all of 2001’s sets, props, and miniatures destroyed so they would never be able to be recycled for future movies, the way Forbidden Planet’s props surfaced in later films.
14. Unused Stargate footage from the end of 2001 made its way into the instrumental “Flying” sequence in The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour movie.
15. Ray Bradbury shared Andrei Tarkovsky’s view that 2001 is anti-humanistic, suggesting that audiences don’t care, or aren’t supposed to care, when astronaut Frank Poole dies.
16. George Lucas stated upfront in 1977 that he thought 2001 was better than Star Wars. He said, “Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science fiction movie, and it is going to be very hard for someone to come along and make a better movie, as far as I'm concerned. On a technical level, [Star Wars] can be compared, but personally I think that 2001 is far superior.”
17. As part of their legal defense that Samsung had not stolen Apple’s design for the iPad, Samsung’s lawyers pointed to the tablet computers used in 2001 as “prior art.” Specifically, their legal brief said the following: “Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. As with the design claimed by the [Apple iPad] Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table's surface), and a thin form factor.”
18. Rock Hudson was among those mystified at 2001’s L.A. premiere at the Pantages Theater. Roger Ebert, in attendance, bears witness that Hudson said, upon storming out before it had ended, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”
19. Malcolm McDowell’s Alex De Large sees a soundtrack album for 2001 when he enters a record shop in A Clockwork Orange.
20. Conspiracy theorists — like one featured in Room 237, the new documentary about the multitude of diverse readings that fans hold regarding Kubrick’s later film The Shining — suggest that NASA commissioned Kubrick to stage the moon landing footage after seeing 2001. However, they ignore the most important bit of evidence that debunks that idea: the moon footage would have looked a hell of a lot better if Kubrick really had directed it.
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt
From Our Partners:Eva Longoria Bikinis on Spring Break (Celebuzz)33 Child Stars: Where Are They Now? (Celebuzz)

The latest movie in the Step Up franchise aims for a politicized message behind all the flashy moves but it could do with a lot less plot and a lot more dancing. In Step Up Revolution the Miami dance group "The Mob" takes to the streets (and other random locations) to perform intricately choreographed routines with their own DJ a camera guy who uploads their videos to YouTube and a graffiti artist who leaves their signature behind. It takes at least that much effort just to get hipster New Yorkers to ride the subways without any pants on once a year; it's hard to believe that The Mob could pull off their elaborate schemes without getting caught but that's the magic of movies.
The Mob represents the more diverse working class side of Miami a young multiracial group of friends who create incredible works of art that disappear before they get shut down. One of the Mob's leaders Sean (Ryan Guzman) earnestly explains to newcomer Emily (Kathryn McCormick) that the group's reason is to give a voice to the voiceless or to be happy or to dance or something. It's not really clear but they have a lot of fun and look amazing doing it.
Once Sean and his friends find out that a greedy developer plans to raze their neighborhood to make way for another South Beach-style hotel monstrosity they have a reason to rally but until then they're just trying to win a cash prize by getting clicks on YouTube. The typical Step Up twist is that Emily is the developer's daughter. Mr. Anderson (Peter Gallagher) doesn't approve of Emily's love of dancing or other frippery and he certainly wouldn't approve of her hanging out with the people causing such mayhem in the streets of Miami.
Step Up Revolution biggest misstep is trying to give the movie more of a hook than the franchise's typical Romeo and Juliet-style love story and tap into "the Zeitgeist" (I swear that's from the studio-provided press notes) of flash mobs. The film could have cut out most of the plot and characters and still have a completely intact film insofar as the point of the film is its multimedia dance routines. The sort of productions The Mob pulls off are more akin to carefully planned art installations or music videos in terms of scope; it would have been better to at least make that somehow feasible in terms of the storyline. Yes we are here for a spectacle and we surely get a spectacle but it needs to have some roots in reality.
The dance scenes are fun sexy and occasionally a little sappy but overall quite enjoyable for people who enjoy "So You Think You Can Dance" type of shows. Kathryn McCormick and Stephen "tWitch" Boss both appeared on "SYTYCD" and their costar Misha Gabriel is a classically trained ballet dancer turned pro back-up dancer for folks like Beyoncé and Michael Jackson. Guzman doesn't have a dance background but he is an MMA fighter who obviously took his training very seriously. The entire outfit is pretty damn entertaining to be honest.
As far as the 3D goes it makes most of Miami look overcast and grey. The extra zings added in to make sure we get our money's worth like sand flicking out at us or a breakdancer whose foot seems to be aiming for our face only serves to distract from the real show at hand. There is also an awful lot of ramping and generally spazzy editing tricks that look cheap. The screenplay by Amanda Brody is definitely not its strong suit.
Step Up Revolution is the cinematic equivalent of a trashy beach novel. It's embarrassing to be caught actually enjoying it and you'll forget about it almost immediately but it's a decent way to spend a summer afternoon.

You love them, we love them, and it's high time Emmy recognized them. We're talking about the TV actors and actresses who have yet to be recognized by the Academy of Television Arts &amp; Sciences, despite drawing us in week in and week out with their awe-inspiring ability to make us laugh, cry, or a weird combination of both. So every day here at Hollywood.com, we're going to be saluting those on the small screen who deserve an Emmy nomination, longshot status be damned. Today, we cast our ballot for Mad Men star Kiernan Shipka.
The very recently concluded fifth season of Mad Men — a longtime Emmy darling that is sure to rack up a nomination or 5 — was arguably its most polarizing to date. Many fans and critics lauded the so-called "season of the women", while others criticized its increasingly pessimistic tone, and creator Matthew Weiner's sudden obsession with newcomer Jessica Paré. The series' eleventh episode, which found fan-favorite Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) making a very out of character decision, was especially divisive — but everyone seems to band together when it comes to the scene-stealing presence of Sally Draper (Shipka).
It's not like Sally's outstanding contributions to the show are anything new. After her fantastic performance as a child coping with her parents' divorce in season 3, she was promoted to series regular — which is an impressive feat for a kid on a show that focuses on sex, infidelity, and the human condition in New York's swinging '60s. (It's even more impressive when you remember that Weiner was asked to eliminate two characters during season five's long negotiation process.) But this season, as she began her difficult and often messy journey into womanhood amongst some of the most selfish characters on television, she became something else entirely — our relatable window into the madcap world of Mad Men.
The adult characters presented on this show — Don Draper in particular — are often larger than life. And the majority of Mad Men's viewers will have a hard time truly identifying with the Dons, the Bettys, and the Rogers that populate Mad Men's bizarre universe — mostly because we were either not alive, or children during the 1960's. Mad Men's fans didn't day drink in a corner suite or face office discrimination during the '60s or '70s, because we were too busy watching cartoons and falling for our own version of a creepy Glen. (Hey, no one said young love was perfect.) We're not watching ourselves on this show, we're watching our parents and grandparents — with much of the same wide-eyed, rapidly decaying innocence of Sally Draper. These people are messed up, and having Sally around as our honorary representative is important.
When Don was honored by the American Cancer Society in episode 7, Shipka managed to perfectly blend the shock and disgust Sally was feeling with her utmost desire to appear grown up and poised. Her face when she opened the door and found her step-grandmother fellating her "date" for the evening really said it all. When she called Glen later that night to complain that Manhattan was "dirty," boy did we agree with her. Even more impressive was her work in episode 4, "Mystery Date", which found Sally stuck at home with her miserable maternal step-grandmother, dealing with the abject horror of the Richard Speck murders. Grandma Pauline, ever a product of her own generation, expected the pre-teen Sally to behave like a fully grown adult, even though she frequently treated her like a child. (Been there.) Sally's well thought out but petulant behavior was great to watch, as was her perfectly appropriate childlike response to news of the murders. Who wouldn't want to curl up and hide upon first learning that true monsters really do exist? (No, not Betty Francis — though Sally's plot with her mother and step-mother is an Emmy-winner in itself.)
All in all, Shipka manages to steal every scene she's in. Though we love our Peggy, our Ken, and our Joan, it's Sally's experiences that are the most universally relatable, and it takes a very talented actor to make those experiences so emotionally powerful for the adults who went through them decades ago. Shipka makes it seem easy, and though we love Sunday night television's other female teen powerhouse (Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams as Arya Stark), it's Shipka that deserves the Emmy nomination this year. Thanks for making our own adolescence seem a little less terrifying in comparison.
Follow Shaunna on Twitter @HWShaunna
[PHOTO CREDIT: AMC]
MORE:
'Mad Men': The Season of the Women
'Mad Men': Why The Show Can't Go On Without Peggy
'Mad Men' Recap: Life and Death Situations

The title of last night's episode of everyone's favorite advertising psychodrama was "Mystery Date," taking a cue, of course, from an advertisement Sally Draper watches with her big fat grandma Pauline during summer vacation. (Notice how we never see her watching real content on television, only the commercial, fitting for this show.) The spot of course is trying to sell teenage girls the game "Mystery Date," but it's really trying to sell the idea that one day a stranger can show up at your door and change your entire life. That's what the episode was made up of, strangers arriving and causing imbalance to the natural order in the characters' lives, but it also took on a rather sinister undertone.
At the top of the show, Peggy's lesbian friend Joyce shows up with photos of a grisly Chicago murder that are too explicit to be published in Life magazine, where she works. Everything during the episode was corrupted by Richard Speck the man who murdered eight student nurses in Chicago in July, 1966. As Joyce says, though riots were breaking out in poorer neighborhoods all over the country, this is what knocked all of those off the front page, a sensational and gruesome murder. It's interesting that, while gathered around the table in the copywriters' room, it is the women (Joyce, Peggy, Megan, and some secretary lady) who are looking at the pictures, not the new male writer, Ginsberg, who shoos the pictures away and tells the ladies to get a grip. Here is how the mystery strangers and serial killers had an effect on each of the characters.
Don: The episode begins with him and Megan in the elevator and Don is seriously ill, which usually means, in the parlance of the show, that he is going through some sort of emotional or spiritual upheaval (remember him recovering at Anna's house in California after his breakup with Betty?). Unlike in other episodes, we have no clue what that's going to be yet. Then comes Don's stranger, Andrea Rhodes (hello, Twin Peaks, Mädchen Amick, how have you been?) who is not a stranger at all. She's one of Don's conquests, a freelance writer he used to work with. This upsets Megan, who is tired of running into ladies that Don has dallied with, or at least tired of Don making it painfully awkward for her by tacitly admitting that he's slept with them while she's around. He later apologizes to Megan, who points out that it is embarrassing that it keeps happening, but what really aggravates her is that so many of these women he slept with he slept with them when married to Betty. If he cheated before, what is going to keep him from philandering again? But she lets him know that she is not going to be played like that, so he better be on his best behavior. With his illness getting even worse, Megan sends him home to recuperate, but says she has lots of work, so she'll stay at the office for a bit. When he gets home, who arrives at the door but Andrea Rhodes (who seems to share a name with a certain Mad Men artist).
This, of course, does not make sense. How did she know where Don lives now? How did she get into the building? She tries to explain it away, but it all seems odd. She comes on to Don hardcore, but he says Megan will be home soon and shows her out the back door, because he doesn't even want Megan to see her on the way out. Later, when Don is soaking the sheets with his sweat, Andrea arrives again. This time we know she is some kind of specter or fever dream, but she is one horny ass ghost, because she is going to have sex with Don on his deathbed whether he likes it or not. Finally, he lets his lust win and relents to her advances, knowing what it would mean to his relationship with Megan. When it's done, Don tells Andrea it was a mistake and can never happen again. "It's a mistake you love making," she says (interestingly conflating the words "love" "making" and "lovemaking"). Don argues back, "I better not see you again. You're not going to ruin this." And she replies, "You'll love it again, because you're a sick, sick..." But before she can finish her sentence, Don has her on the ground choking the life out of her. He has become Richard Speck, killing the women he is simultaneously turned on and disgusted by.
We've seen Don get rough with plenty of women in the past, but this is the most violent he's ever gotten and, while he is in the midst of a fever-induced fugue, it still shows us that, if driven to it, he could murder a woman. Of course Andrea is not real, she's a manifestation of every women that Don has ever cheated on a woman with. He wants to change for Megan, he wants to be the perfect man but knows, somewhere deep inside, that he is entirely incapable of fidelity. That's what is interesting about his relationship with Megan. He doesn't want to be faithful to make her happy, he wants to be faithful to prove to himself that he's not a sick man. That's why this marriage is doomed.
Don hides Andrea's corpse under the bed (an odd echo of Cora Amuro, the one nurse who survived Speck's attack by hiding under the bed), but he does a really half-assed job of it, leaving her limps sticking out and her earring on the carpet. This could be because he is ill or it could be because he wants Megan to catch him, to know what he was up to and punish him accordingly (we know Don has a think for women who beat him). Of course when Megan arrives in the morning, backlit by the sun like some sort of angel, the demon of Andrea is gone, Bobby Ewing is taking a shower, and it was all a dream. Don asks where Megan was and she says she was in the bed all night next to him. He's relieved that he behaved himself and exorcised his demon, but it seems to be more a prediction than anything. As for Megan, doesn't it seem odd that he didn't register her presence at all? Is it possible that she wasn't there? That she was out having a dalliance of her own?
Hmm... Speaking of Megan, you can also look at the theme from her perspective, where Don is the stranger who arrived in her life and changed everything, and she's slowly coming to the realization that he is also some kind of monster. He will cheat on her, he will take her for granted, and he won't care that much about her in the end. Her dream of a prince charming has become sullied by the real world Don, who is just as human as anyone else.
Ginsberg: The new wacky copywriter isn't haunted by a stranger as much as he is a stranger himself. When he and Cosgrove meet with Don about pitching an ad to a shoe store, he mentions that they thought about going the "Cinderella route" but Don says it's a cliche and Ginsberg presents him with something nice and traditional. They present the pitch to the client, who loves their idea and is sold on it, but after that Ginsberg brings up the Cinderella idea and pitches a whole different commercial, one that seems to have shades of Richard Speck all over it. Cinderella is fleeing from something, some sort of dark menace, but when it finally catches up to her, it's not an attacker, it's a prince, and he's holding her shoe and will change her life forever. It's a great ad, if not a little dark. Don chastises Ginsberg for going over his head and making the pitch without clearing it with Don, but there are deeper dynamics at play.
Ginsberg is doing what Don used to do, go into the meeting, make it up as he was going along, and ending up with a stroke of brilliance. He's gunning for Don's job and would do the professional equivalent of murdering Don to take his place, and now Don knows it. He will one day take Don's place, and that makes him very dangerous. What we don't know is if he really did just make this up on the spot or if he had this intention all along, to go in there and upstage Don and the rest of the team so that he could hog the glory for himself. I'm gonna say he did, but we're all going to be keeping an eye on this trickster.
Sally: I always like to refer to Sally as future lesbian Sally Draper or eventual drug addict Sally Draper, because it seems that she is forever destined to be one or the other. Last night we had some good evidence that she's going to end up being both. Sally calls up Don, unhappy because she's stuck in her creepy house with big fat Grandma Pauline, a virtual stranger, while Bobby is at camp and her mother and Henry are off ignoring their children, which seems to be Betty's wont (when she's not wanting to finish all the sundaes on the whole damn earth). She doesn't enjoy Paulie because she enforces rules and discipline. "My mom has no rules," Sally tells her and that is the truth. Betty's idea of parenting is barking, "Go to your room," when her kids get on her nerves. Pauline, on the other hand, shares a priceless story about how her father once kicked her clear across the room and said, "That's for nothing, so look out." If there was ever a Mad Men story, it's this one! Life will just kick you for no good reason, so you better get ready to be knocked around. It's the sort of story Don would tell Sally, but since he's not around the only authority Sally has in her life is Pauline (an inverse allusion to her touching relationship with her late grandfather in past seasons).
One of the rules is that BF Paulie, while obsessed with reading about and talking about the Speck murder, won't tell Sally anything about it. After slapping her hand to keep her from reading the paper, she then puts the front page up to keep Sally from reading the article and there is a huge headline about "MURDER" splashed across it. This is what it's like parenting children in the media age, you can try to keep things from them, but the truth will always seep through. And isn't it interesting that it's the women who are so interested in the killings, as if reading and gossiping about it is a way to dispel their fear, some sort of talisman that will keep it from happening to them. Sally, being eternally willfull, steals the newspaper out of the trash and reads it in bed, terrorizing herself with visions of a knife-wielding mad man. She goes downstairs to find Paulie equally terrified and sitting with a knife. When Sally starts to ask her questions. Paulie explains that the man probably did it because the women drove him wild with their bodies. They were asking for it, is what she seems to say. She fills Sally's head simultaneously with the idea of the irresistible erotic women and the evil sexual impulses of men — something that would seem to be a formative sexual discussion for a budding lesbian. Then, to calm Sally down, Pauline gives her half a Seconal to sedate the poor child into submission after scaring her half to death. Great, now Paulie just created a lesbian junkie. Way to go, Pauline.
When Betty and Henry arrive home the next morning, they find Pauline passed out on the couch and can't find Sally. She's hidden under the sofa, the only place she feels safe from a murderer. It's also the place where her father stashed a corpse earlier in the evening. While it's unfair to say that Don killed Sally, we can see how not having his influence in her life and leaving her to Betty's awful parenting is having a negative effect on her. It's as if she's trying to stay safe under the couch too, but can she ever really be safe and grow up normal in a family like this.
Peggy: Peggy's stranger and upheaval comes thanks to Roger. She has her fierce green pumps up on her desk on Friday afternoon when Roger shows up frantic because he never asked Ginsberg to start on the Mohawk Airlines campaign. He begs Peggy to do it over the weekend, and instead of just being a pushover and the eager beaver we once knew, she bilks him out of $410, behaving confident and entitled, just like the men in the office would. Then she gleefully counts her money.
Late in the night she hears a noise and is convinced that it's some sort of serial killer. She goes into Don's office and finds that Dawn, his new black secretary, is camping out in there. For a second, I was afraid I was watching a Tyler Perry presents situation and she was living there, but Dawn explains that there have been riots in New York and a cab won't take her home and her brother won't let her take the subway at night, so she's going to crash on Don's couch. Peggy, like the other women, is worried about this serial killer, something insane and very far away, whereas Dawn is more worried about the riots, something very real and very local. She has her priorities straight out of necessity. Peggy, who thinks herself so progressive (with her boyfriend covering the race riots and all) that she invites Dawn over her house and won't take no for an answer. They have a nice heart-to-heart and Peggy opens up to Dawn, saying that she was the only one of her kind there for a long time too and they should stick together. Very sweet.
Then Peggy does that awful thing she does and assumes that all women want to be her and that she could turn Dawn into her mentee and turn her into a copywriter. Once Dawn says she's happy with her job, Peggy says she is too. This is the shadow that Speck is casting on her. Not only were those women that he killed but nursing students, professional women. She sees their being in school and trying to make a career as what lead to their murder, as if it was some kind of punishment. Peggy herself worries that she is becoming a man, and Dawn tells her the obvious truth, that to survive she's going to have to behave a bit like a man. Drunk Peggy decides it's time to go to bed and before she turns in and leaves Dawn on the couch, she eyes her purse, full of Roger's $410 and thinks that maybe she should bring it with her becuase she doesn't trust this stranger. Dawn, who is seeming to loosen up in Peggy's presence, sees Peggy seeing the purse and you can imagine the disappointment she felt realizing that this white lady, while nice and trying to be progressive, is just like all the other white ladies who don't trust her. But Peggy leaves her purse there on the coffee table and goes off into her room. In the morning, she wakes up to find Dawn gone, the sheets and blankets folded neatly, and her purse unmolested on the coffee table. There's a note that says, "Thanks for your hospitality, sorry to put you out." Peggy is ashamed of herself for saying they should stick together but not trusting Dawn regardless. And Dawn knew she was an inconvenience and while Peggy's intentions were good, the outcome wasn't exactly what she hoped it would be.
Joan: The funny thing about Joan's story is that the stranger at her door was actually her very own husband Doctor Rapist. Well, he's now Sgt. Doctor Rapist and he is home from Vietnam to see his son (which is really Roger's son) for the first time. She's happy to have him home and after a visit with the baby, a roll in the hay, and the debut of the most gorgeous nightgown I have ever seen on prime time television, Sgt. Dr. Rapist has an announcement: he's going back to Vietnam for another year. Joan, of course, is not happy about it, but he says that the Army left him no choice and he has to do it.They go to dinner with Mr. &amp; Mrs. Sgt. Dr. Rapist and the parents tell Joan to convince him to stay in the U.S. Joan, is trying to be supportive and do what she always does, putting on a brave face during adversity. She stands by her husband, even while both her mother and his parents fight to get him to stay. Then they reveal that he's not being forced to go back, but that he's going back voluntarily. Oh snap! Joan is not happy about that. Then an accordion player comes over and shoves his instrument between Joan and Sgt. Dr. Rapist, keeping them apart when Joan playing the accordion once saved a dinner party he was throwing, bringing them together. Oh, how the times have changed. They go back home and get in a giant fight and Joan locks herself in her room for the night.
When she emerges in the morning she says, "I think you should go," and Sgt. Dr. Rapist is glad that she came around, and Joan says, "No, I think you should go for good. Get out. I don't want no scrubs, a scrub is a guy that can get no love from me." OK, she didn't, but I wish she did. Sgt. Dr. Rapist gets all upset and abusive, as we have seen before, and explains that he wants to go back to Vietnam because it makes him feel important. He's good at his job and that's where he's needed. If anyone should understand that it's Joan, whose identity comes from being good at her job and necessary in the workplace. But she doesn't. She snarls, "I'm glad the Army makes you feel like a man, because I'm tired of trying to, and you know what I'm talking about."
She is, of course, bringing up when he raped her back in season 2. Joan seemed to have conveniently forgotten that he did that to her so that she could go ahead with the fairy tale version of what her life should be like. But, just like the stranger Richard Speck ruined those nurses or Megan's Prince Charming Don turned out to be a scallywag, Joan's knight in shining armor left a lot to be desired to. She says she's sick of it and would rather rely on herself than have to keep struggling with her husband.
Of course this is all very convenient for Joan, who is hiding the secret that her baby was fathered by Roger, not Sgt. Dr. Rapist. Is she really sick of making her husband feel adequate when she knows he's not, or is this a convenient way to get him out of her life. She tells him to get out because he picked the Army over her, then their breakup is his fault. If she waits until the baby gets old enough to have hair and it's steely gray like Roger's and the jig is up, then he might dump her and the breakup would be her fault. As always, Joan need to be free from blame so maybe this is as good excuse as any. While putting on her brave face and steeling herself up for a life of self-sufficence, what we see at the end of the episode isn't a strong confident Joan, but her lying awake in bed with her mother and her child, thinking about the future, worrying about how she's going to make it happen, pondering just how she can be big bad Joan at work, nice daughter Joan at home, and still raise her son to be the Prince that she always wanted. She's wondering just how she got here, how she picked the wrong man, and how things never work out for her. She's just like that Cinderella in Ginsberg's commercial: a dark force has been chasing her and chasing her for all these years and she's finally turned around to confront it and instead of it being a prince holding out a shoe for her and putting it on her foot he just drops it right there in the gutter and it's up to her to bend over, pick it up, clean it off, and put it on her foot herself.
Follow Brian on Twitter @BrianJMoylan.
More:
Mad Men Recap: Much Ado About Betty
Mad Men's Jessica Pare: Why Megan is Better Than Betty
Mad Men Star Jon Hamm Doesn't Get Spoilers

Told in a sometimes-confusing collection of flashbacks and flash forwards La Vie en Rose traces the beloved French singer's troubled life from her early years in her grandmother's Normandy brothel to her death at age 47 as a frail morphine-addicted wreck. Born Edith Giovanna Gassion in 1915 Paris Piaf first won fans as a young street performer. Years later when she was a gamine girl just out of her teens she was discovered by Louis Leplée (Gerard Depardieu) who helped launch her career as a cabaret chanteuse and gave her the nickname that would stick with her for life: "Piaf " slang for "sparrow." She went on to worldwide success but her personal life remained unstable with weaknesses for drinking and drugs eventually blossoming into full-blown addiction after the tragic death of her one true love boxer Marcel Cerdan (Jean-Pierre Martins). From start to finish La Vie en Rose is Marion Cotillard's movie. The two young actresses who portray Piaf as a child (Manon Chevallier and Pauline Burlet) do a good job paving the way--Burlet is particularly soulful and touching--but once Cotillard takes over Piaf really comes to life. And does she ever. Like Judy Davis in Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows Cotillard inhabits her character so fully that it's hard to believe you're not watching Piaf herself. Brazen and shy brash and girlish Cotillard's Piaf is a study in contradictions and vulnerability. Her outspoken confidence masks a deep-seated fear of loneliness--which along with her passion for singing and her ardor for Cerdan were the ruling emotions of her life. The way that Cotillard conveys the havoc that those emotions wreaked on Piaf's life is sometimes showy but always heartfelt. Opting for nonlinear storytelling in a biopic is a bold choice--and one that doesn't quite work for La Vie en Rose. Just when you're starting to get a handle on the sequence of events that led to Piaf's sadly premature death a new wrinkle arises that leaves you doing some quick timeline math (did the car crash come before or after the collapse on stage? when exactly did she first start taking morphine?)--which ends up distancing you from both Piaf and her story. The Little Sparrow remains somewhat of an enigma throughout the movie no matter how many melodramatic outbursts she has or drunken confessions she makes. Happily the music is fantastic--how could it not be with Piaf's classic songs mingling with the cabaret smoke and ringing out in the grand music halls? It's just too bad that La Vie en Rose isn't as affecting as the ballad it's named for.

When Alien was released almost a quarter of a century ago moviegoers lapped it up to the tune of $78.9 million--enough to make it the second highest grossing film of that year. Renowned film critic Pauline Kael who wrote about the Alien phenomenon in The New Yorker noted: "It was more gripping than entertaining but a lot of people didn't mind. They thought it was terrific because at least they'd felt something; they'd been brutalized." Now in an era utterly saturated with the genre the film still assaults audiences on a level that has yet to be matched. The story in Alien: The Director's Cut remains the same: seven crewmembers of the commercial ship Nostromo are awakened from their cryo-sleep capsules halfway through their journey home to investigate an S.O.S. distress call from an alien vessel. Unbeknownst to crew the distress call is actually a warning. When three crewmembers leave to investigate the abandoned ship they unsuspectingly allow an alien life to board the Nostromo a galactic horror that begins to kill the crew one by one--leaving only one exceptionally tough woman.
Ellen Ripley (a very young Sigourney Weaver) who leads the fight for survival against the alien has to date returned for three sequels: James Cameron's 1986 Aliens which earned Weaver an Oscar nomination for Best Actress David Fincher's 1992 Alien3 and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's 1997 Alien Resurrection. For fans who have followed Ripley's evolution from a by-the-book crewmember to a hybrid half-alien half-human clone it's exciting to revisit the roots of her character and understand what fuels her revenge. The rest of the ensemble including Tom Skerritt as Captain Dallas Veronica Cartwright as Lambert Harry Dean Stanton as Brett John Hurt as Kane Ian Holm as Ash and Yaphet Kotto as Parker seems just as appropriately cast today as it probably did then and even 25 years later the crew of the Nostromo doesn't look like a '70s interpretation of futuristic space workers.
To revisit the set of Alien's Nostromo director Ridley Scott (Matchstick Men) and his team of archivists sifted through hundreds of boxes of film footage discovered in a London vault. From this material unseen in almost 25 years Scott selected new footage which then underwent digital restoration matching it to Alien's newly polished negative. The result is six minutes of additional footage which goes to show how little improving the original film needed. The most palpable addition is a scene in which Ripley stumbles upon "the nest " where she discovers that her crewmates have been cocooned by the alien. But the rest of Scott's additional footage is so subtle that even diehard Alien fans will have a difficult time pinpointing the new material which consists mainly of new shots of the slimy and metallic alien. The Director's Cut also features a brand-new six-track digital stereo mix which strengthens the film's slow but intense cadence with its pulsating beats. But remastered or not the film remains as gripping today as it was when it was first released in 1979.

Only mildly titillating and not especially thrilling the wannabe erotic thriller In the Cut isn't able to rise to the occasion so to speak. This yawner stars Meg Ryan as Frannie a depressed creative writing teacher in New York who keeps mostly to herself unless it's to get together with her slutty half-sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Wary about love Frannie's seen how messed up relationships can get. The last guy Frannie dated an mentally unstable med student (Kevin Bacon) is stalking her while crazy sis Pauline is currently stalking a married man who has a restraining order against her. These people have serious issues and dour Frannie figures its easier just to fantasize about men and masturbate (hey don't we all?). Then she meets Det. James Malloy (Mark Ruffalo) an aggressive yet charismatic cop who questions her about the brutal murder of a woman in the neighborhood. Things get all screwy (in more ways than one) when the attraction between Frannie and Malloy grows and the slick detective ends up taking Frannie to some new sexual heights while at the same time strange occurrences are making her suspect Malloy is the murderer. Aw she's just so negative. It all comes to a head so to speak as the real murderer comes to light blah blah blah--but all we want to know is will Frannie finally find a good anti-depressant?
Along with so many actresses Meg Ryan apparently believes dying her hair brown wearing no makeup and sporting a sour and we suspect surgically enhanced face (she looks more nauseated than anything) gives her dramatic heft. And what about that gutsy move of showing a little frontal? Stop the presses--America's sweetheart bares her soul and her breasts! Unfortunately it all backfires. The usually perky Ryan can't dig deep enough to inhabit Frannie's miserable persona even though she's had practice (remember When a Man Loves a Woman and Courage Under Fire) and with In the Cut she comes off looking worse than ever literally and figuratively with a wrist-slitting performance that only proves comedies will forever be her forte (where's Sally when you need her?) As the skanky cop Ruffalo (You Can Count on Me) fares a bit better but still telling a woman all the things you want do to her in bed in a flat emotionless voice doesn't help his case as a sexually provocative leading man. If Ryan's Frannie was not so lifeless maybe she and Malloy could have sizzled but they never connect. The always-good Leigh would have made a much better Frannie. As disturbed Pauline she turns in the most interesting performance of the film.
Director Jane Campion (The Piano) admits she was going for a specific look and feel with In the Cut that of the emotionally charged '70s dramas and thrillers such as the classic 1971 erotic thriller Klute about an emotionally distant prostitute who helps a detective solve a string of murders. In the Cut tries to be Klute--sans Jane Fonda's Oscar-winning performance as the prostitute and Donald Sutherland's superb turn as the smitten detective. Campion's film lacks both stellar performances and the street grit that made those older films so powerful though she does give the film the same drab grimy look of a '70s indie film to match the mood of her main characters (and what fun that is). Plus the way she annoyingly films scenes out of focus makes you think you've got myopia--the periphery is constantly out of focus. Rather than being artsy all this does is trigger a headache.

Top Story
There will be a strong French flavor at the Montreal World Film Festival this year, as the festival announced its lineup Tuesday. Many of the films in competition are French, including two well-known French actors' directorial debuts. Sophie Marceau (Braveheart) will be attending the festival in support of her film Parlez-Moi D'amour (Speak to Me of Love) as will Vincent Perez (Indochine) for his film Peau D'ange, starring Guillaume Depardieu. Two American films--Blue Car starring David Strathairn and Igby Goes Down starring Kieran Culkin, Susan Sarandon and Ryan Phillippe--will also screen in competition. French producer/director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) will receive a lifetime achievement award. The festival runs from Aug. 22-Sept. 2.
Celebs
Actor Nicolas Cage is planning to sell his comic book collection at the Dallas ComiCon convention Oct. 11-13, The Associated Press reports. The collection of about 400 comic books includes Action Comics No. 1, Superman's first appearance, as well as first appearances by Batman, Captain America and the Green Lantern. John Petty, the director of auctions for Heritage Comics Auctions, said the collection could "realize a value well into seven figures."
Three weeks after Arnold Schwarzenegger left the William Morris Agency he has signed a deal with rival Creative Artists Agency, Variety reports. Even though his career is fading a little with bombs like Collateral Damage, Schwarzenegger hopes to come back big in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, currently in production.
Family members of Pauline Phillips, otherwise known as Dear Abby, revealed Tuesday that the advice columnist has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Her twin sister, Esther Lederer, who wrote as Ann Landers for the Chicago Sun-Times, died in June. Phillips' daughter Jeanne had been writing the column, which appears in roughly 1,300 newspapers, for a few years and now takes sole credit.
Movies
Director John McTiernan is looking to get a Booster shot. Variety reports he is in talks to direct The Booster, a film about two legendary thieves who reunite during a winter storm to rob the 91st floor of Chicago's Sears Tower--from the outside. Sounds like fun.
Tube News
Before she leaves Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar wants to kill off her alter ego in style. The actress told the London Evening Standard, "It's important for me to go out on top." Her contract expires at the end of the next season, and producer Joss Whedon has stated he thinks the show is strong enough to go on without her.
Music News
Three members of the British band Oasis--Noel Gallagher, Andy Bell and Jay Darlington--were in a car accident in Indianapolis and are recovering from minor injuries, including facial bruises. The accident occurred Tuesday when the taxi they were traveling in was involved in a head-on collision. The band was to perform in the city Wednesday, but the concert has been postponed.
Rock legend Jimi Hendrix has been voted the greatest guitarist of all time in a poll by Total Guitar, a leading European guitar magazine. Jimmy Page of the band Led Zeppelin came in second place, with Eric Clapton claiming the third spot.